"Nope!" and to the girls' surprise the horse wrangler snapped out
the answer. "Shoot the leaders and pile 'em up in the gap. Then
swing 'em."

"Oh, I don't want to do that," yelled Steve. "The boss will have a
fit. Who started this thing, anyway? That fool boy?"

"Oh! where is Walter?" gasped Grace.

But another cowboy from down below shouted:

"It's a put up job. I saw somebody start 'em. They've been
stampeded, Steve."

The next moment the hullabaloo of the cattle themselves made human
voices unbearable. A flash of lightning showed the front of the
herd as it charged up the slight rise to the mouth of the cut.

Ahead of them, riding like mad and using his coiled rope to urge
his pony, came a single rider. Another flash of lightning revealed
his identity to the girls.

"Walter! Oh, Walter! He will be killed!" shrieked Grace.

Nan Sherwood leaped a pace in advance as though she would go, afoot
as she was, to his rescue. Bess covered her face with her hands.
Rhoda shouted in so ear-piercing a tone that the men at the corral
heard her: